Totally! At 87 that's gutsy! My very first paid programming work was in Forth on a 6502 platform in the '60s, building a networked accounting and flow management program for a water company, but I'm now 81 and very glad to be retired.
House Republicans have been refusing to show up for work for over a month, while still collecting a paycheck. They expect air traffic controllers, et al. to work for free.
Yes? If I bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica and it turned out half my fellow passengers were actually part of the xyz gang and hijacked it and flew it to... I don't know... El Salvador I would be entirely correct in calling them criminal hijackers and I'd be justifiably pissed off (and scared).
If you add the eligible voters who chose not to vote (indicating they were fine with whoever wins), then it's a clear majority. If you don't vote, your vote is effectively for the winner.
not being motivated enough to vote against != support in terms of claiming a popular mandate. If I just don't care who wins, you can't say I support either candidate.
At most you could say my inaction prevented the winner from losing I guess.
It’s a first past the post election system, meaning you vote for the lesser evil. And this was Trump’s 2nd go around, where he campaigned on pardoning traitors. Anyone that didn’t vote for Harris gets lumped in with the supporters of the current administration, for all intents and purposes.
Eh. You can’t claim the non voters all implicitly support him though since they didn’t know the outcome ahead of time. I’ll agree they didn’t sufficiently oppose him ahead of the 2nd time to bother voting. But that’s far from support.
The current administration won the vote. And in fact the continuing resolutions that would fund the government have majority support in both houses of Congress, by the representatives of American citizens. But it needs 60 votes in Senate not just 50 votes. Right now most Democrat senators (all but 3) are voting against even a clean funding resolution that makes no changes to the pre shutdown status quo.
This is a gentle fiction. The GOP has the 51 votes to change this rule by lunchtime tomorrow and proceed to govern according to the mandate they claim. They may choose not to do that, as is their prerogative.
But they do not "need" 60 votes according to the Constitution, which is free online to read. One can even search for a 60-vote cloture requirement in the document and its amendments, which are in fact the real governing documents that describe how Congress is required to operate.
> This is a gentle fiction. The GOP has the 51 votes to change this rule by lunchtime tomorrow and proceed to govern according to the mandate they claim. They may choose not to do that, as is their prerogative.
You're correct, of course, but they're doing something that's exceedingly rare these days: they're thinking about the ramifications for when the shoe is on the other foot.
Which is kinda dumb, because Democrats have shown time and again that they're willing to throw the rulebook out when it suits them (but they'll cry crocodile tears when it's done to them).
It's all moot anyway; now that the election is over, and they don't need to leverage their constituents well-being for votes, Democrats have indicated a willingness to pass the bill.
> Democrats have shown time and again that they're willing to throw the rulebook out when it suits them
Notably, not for healthcare! (Older person's perspective: the pseudo-requirement for 60 votes is quite possibly why the US didn't get universal healthcare in 2010.)
Anyway, yes it is good if parties who win at the ballot box are able to enact their policies into law. The filibuster prevents this and as such is a cancer on representative government.
The GOP should be able to install armed checkpoints on every city block and eliminate the ACA, returning us to the status quo of 2009[1]. They won the most recent election, that is their prerogative. They should be bound by existing law, but beyond that there should be few checks on them realizing their wish list.
By the same token, when Democrats win, they should be able to offer a Medicare For All and universal preschool[2].
Parties that win should be able to enact their policies. Let the voters decide which policies they prefer. Which brings me back to
> they're thinking about the ramifications for when the shoe is on the other foot.
If they have conviction that their constituents will like their policies, they needn't worry. They should actively want to be able to enact their policies, so that voters can choose them again to get more of the same. What leader of conviction would intentionally neuter their own capabilities?
They're making the right move since everyone just blames orange man bad, as you see in the comments here.
The budget filibuster has been a weird rule for a while that has really just relied on the honor system that the majority party will throw a small bone to the minority to pass the budget. It was only a matter of time until people figured out it doesn't have to be a small bone.
Correct, and anyone that points out that the Democrats could pass this tomorrow are downvoted, and the conversation shifts to some other topic. It's crazy how neither side wants to give in.
Yeah, it's crazy how one side doesn't want to give in because they're unwilling to countenance a loss of healthcare for millions of Americans, while the other side doesn't want to give in because they're unwilling to give up on massive tax breaks for the wealthiest of the wealthy!
They did win the vote and once they started enacting their agenda people decided they didn’t like what they saw which led to the results last night. Trump won because people were misinformed, uninformed, or simply lied to by Trump and his machine.
yes, going straight into the mountain isn't any more pleasant even if 90% of the passengers sit in the cockpit. Which I hope stays a metaphor given the amount of air traffic controllers they just laid off.
Although if that metaphor is too rough I suppose we can also go with the inmates running the asylum
This whole topic is about politics and I am leery of steering even more in that direction, but based on recent polls, I’m not sure that the passengers currently do support the hijackers.
The Republican party has the power to negotiate with the Democrats at any point and reopen the government. This is a Republican shutdown, through and through.
> Amazingly, Republicans were also blamed when the sides were reversed.
Because again and again, it is Republicans who show they are uninterested in governance, while Democrats demonstrate their commitment to it—even if they are sometimes bad at it.
Insofar as Schumer has the power to block the funding, Senate Republicans have the power to unblock Schumer's block. They just don't want to use it, because they feel it would not be politically advantageous in the future. The problem they have now is, at the end of the day, voters understand the buck stops at Resolute desk, and Schumer is not sitting there.
With great power comes great responsibility. If the most powerful person in the world doesn't bear ultimate responsibility when the party he controls can't fund the government he runs, who else is responsible? It doesn't matter he's not a dictator, he's POTUS, he's the leader. The throne comes equipped with a sword dangling above it.
Past presidents understood assuming ultimate responsibility is in the job description, and voters understand it as well. Maybe you think it's incredibly stupid, but I think it's a hallmark of a great leader to assume ultimate responsibility, especially when negative outcomes are not in his control. Conversely, I think weak, feckless leaders pass the buck to subordinates and/or opponents.
Past presidents tried their best to weasel their way out of any responsibility for things going wrong and blame the other side for everything. That's being a politician. The only difference is that the power levels on Trump's reality distortion field are miles past what anyone thought possible in 2015.
Yeah, they could end the filibuster, but they're terrified of what that would mean if and when Democrats take control of the Senate again.
The Republican party plans to never leave power again, but they're not actually confident they can pull it off. If they were, the filibuster would be gone already.
Last night's election was a good example of why that scares them.
The Republicans hold sway over all three branches of government. They can reopen the government anytime they wish. Why do you suppose they're not doing that?
It does not require 60 votes. 60 votes is just a convention that republicans are choosing to abide by. The republicans could pass a funding bill tomorrow with a simple 50 vote majority, but they are choosing not to because it makes it easier to blame democrats (which you are falling for hook, line, sinker).
No, they cannot pass it with a 50 vote majority unless they end the filibuster. Ending the filibuster does not currently have support in the Republican congress, because of the intense political risks associated with that.
I don't think you understand the implications of ending the filibuster if you think this is just about convention, or "making it easier to blame the Democrats". Trump would love to end the filibuster, but the Republican congress is having to think very hard about what it would mean for them if and when the Democrats retake control of the Senate.
I understand the implications. I don’t know what that has to do with I said. The republicans have the power the end the shutdown tomorrow without the democrats, but they are choosing not to.
Are you sure that's how it works, or is that just what somebody told you? In the latter case, you've been lied to, and you need to go back to that person and ask them why they did that.
Don't pretend ignorance, it is unbecoming and dishonest. You know how the process works. For historical reasons it requires 60 votes in the Senate for all intents and purposes to re-open the government, which the Republicans don't have.
I've never been a Republican but the line of argument you are pursuing is gross no matter who does it. Have some self-respect.
I've been a Federal employee (multiple times) through prior shutdowns and have worked in Washington DC off and on over decades. I don't have much time for low-effort political rage bait from people that have no willingness to engage with reality.
Your ignorance of how Federal politics works is not my problem. Plenty of other ways you could learn if you were actually interested.
Both parties are responsible for the shutdown at this point.
The debate is which one is more righteous: the one keeping it shut to prevent millions from having healthcare in sacrifice to the rich, or the side keeping it shut to fight for healthcare affordability for 15.million people and keeping rural hospitals open?
The "gangster" wants the government open, republicans in Congress have all voted ~10 times to reopen. How can you not blame the only people voting to keep it closed?
Loeliger's 'Threaded Interpretive Languages' jumpstarted my career in the late 1970s: I built a networked water management system based on their code, which was my first big project, earning me £1,500. Note that there's a bug in their code (I no longer remember exactly where) so getting it off the ground was tricky.
Well now's your chance to familiarize yourself with the pop culture of 20 years ago. There's this other great book about UK authoritarianism, it's called 1984 by this little known author George Orwell.
Interesting that they didn't find the nights too cold for sleeping out. We camped in Racetrack Playa one spring some years back and the nights were bitterly cold with extreme wind.
Well, they do say it's taking longer for the tracked males to find mates, so that is encouraging. Although it also says the range has expanded so who knows.
Yes, it's a lovely book and led me to my first paid project over 40 years ago! Using the book I built a Forth to monitor the local water authority systems, with water-level tracking and customer accounting & billing, implemented on a home-brewed network of North Star PCs. Iirc there's a minor bug in one of the base subroutines as written though now I don't remember what it was. But I still have the book :-)
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